The One SEO Tip You Need to Know

March 7, 2016

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is on the mind of anyone that wants to get more traffic to their site. If you’re not quite sure what SEO is, let’s step back for a moment to explain. In layman’s terms, SEO is the configuration of a website so that Google (and Bing) can understand it. By following these practices, you can tell a search engine exactly what your site, page, and post is about in hopes of making the front page on a search.

When you are optimizing your site for Search Engines, everything you add to the site from the text, to the images to the actual language you use in the post is important. Google and Bing send search engine bots to crawl and index your site. If the bots can’t quickly understand what your post is about, it may be indexed incorrectly or not at all. If your site is set up with SEO, you have a better chance to rank for the keywords you want to get on that front page of the search results.

Most people feel that SEO is that one missing piece, the reason they aren’t getting the traffic they deserve. Just set everything up perfectly for SEO, and your traffic will start flooding in, right? Well most SEO companies would love for you to keep believing this, but I’m not 100% convinced.

I can’t tell you how many podcasts I have listened to and articles I’ve read about SEO. It’s definitely past the triple digits. But sadly, just like all the hype out there, SEO doesn’t really work like that. Why? Because ranking decent on Google or Bing is more than just finding the proper keyword and setting your blog up with an SEO plugin. It has more to do with persistence and perseverance. Now don’t get me wrong, SEO is extremely important and should be done. But once it’s in place, it’s up to you for the next steps. SEO isn’t set it and forget it, it’s something you are going to constantly work for.

If SEO was that easy you most likely wouldn’t have found this post or taken the time to read it. You’d already be getting all the traffic you need.

So what about my one SEO tip then?

If I could go back in time and talk to the old me (see my post on the 5 Things I wish I Knew When I Started Blogging). The one who didn’t know a thing about blogging or even had a clue what SEO was or the complex algorithm that Google uses (and constantly changes) to rank, my SEO tip would be that I needed to have patience. My mind is very technical and I always figured, that there was one little thing I was missing to make everything click. Then, and only then, would my site get the traffic I thought it deserved. If your site is brand new (I’m talking to anyone who has been doing this less than 3 years), you are still young in this vast web of the Internet and that’s all what it comes down to. The web. If you are doing everything by the SEO “book” then you just need to keep doing it.

That means you are

Writing amazing content that is worth sharing, viewing, and reading.

Writing great titles and researching keywords to implement into your posts.

Understanding your audience and who you’re writing for.

Implementing optimized images and image best practices for social media.

Guest posting to contribute to the great “web” that is the Internet (and back linking).

Today, everyone’s go-to response for SEO is “write good content”. But this is a misleading tip because what is good content to you, to me, to your audience, and to search engines may be different. I read all these articles that talk about the tips and tricks to Google ranking and while I could go in depth about each of the bullet points above, I want you to walk away from this article knowing that this stuff takes time. Guest posting takes time, building site rapport takes time, and writing great articles takes time. So, SEO ranking takes time. Make sure you’re hitting your SEO best practices and just keep enjoying the journey of blogging.

If you’re not quite sure about SEO, join the Blogger Optimization Network. It’s got a ton of free content and even walks you through SEO best practices.

Comments

I work in IT as my day job and we hobby blog. It is my opinion that SEO has an element of luck involved. Did a bot find you on the right day? Did a bigger website make a perfect link with wonderful anchor text? Some of it is just blind luck. But setting yourself up for those occurances helps!

Great tips. SEO is something my blog needs more of, but I never really know where to look and what to do. You offer some great insights that will help tremendously, however. Hopefully, I’ll increase my traffic enough that I can grow my blog even more. Thanks for sharing this on #shinebloghop this week!

Great advice that I needed to hear this morning. I’ve only been blogging for about 5 months and was beginning to get discouraged, but had an inkling that it just takes time…and this post confirmed that. Thanks for sharing these ideas!

Keep working at it Kerry. It can take some time to learn everything you need to know but when you look back in a year you’ll be able to see how far you’ve come and everything you’ve learned! Thanks for the comment and stopping by 🙂

SEO is tough for me. I feel like the keywords I would look for aND trying to insert it in five different places throughout the post makes it feel less authentic and more mechanical. I often opt for the headline I think will gra b attention versus the SEO optimized one. Great article and I agree SEO and blogging do take patience! Thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday Linkup. Tweeted using #SmallVictoriesSundayLinkup.

It is certainly easy to get discouraged. At the time, I do not do much with SEO. I don’t look up key words, etc. right now. IT has taken me longer than I thought it would to just get the hang of running a website. I know that I need to focus on SEO more in order to grow our blog. All in time, all in time……

You’ll get their Renee, keep at it. It’s exactly like you said, All in time! Make sure to sign up for BloggerOptimizatinoNetwork.com. It’s free and may help you say ahead of the curve on learning your new site and blogging world.